Vidya of 2009

View blog entry: Vidya of 2009 – Twilight Lynk

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I find it funny that you think the 360 had the best year, but the only exclusive game you mentioned was ODST, although I guess for you that is a reasonable conclusion since you get all your multi-plat games on it, /shrug. I'll type more later, but I have some errands to run.

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I'm pretty sure I said at the start that this is the kind of year I had. I'm sure that if the 360 didn't exist or that all the multi-platform games ran better (or the PS3 had a better controller), I would have bought all those games for the PS3 and would have said that the PS3 had the best year... since I would have spent more time playing games on it.

I've already tried playing through some games on PS3 and the games are either buggy (eg. CivRev) or I didn't like the way it felt using the PS3 controller over the 360 controller.

There are some multiplatform games I would consider getting on the PS3 than on the 360 though... like Final Fantasy XIII

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Yeah getting the ps3 version of it also i am the same as lynk on this i have a 360 so all the mulitplatform games are cheaper for me here as well and more expensive for the ps3, so i only get the ps3 ones that no other system has or the ones that will run better on ps3 eg ff 13 just like lynk said

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I would say 2009 rivals 2007 in terms of video game awesomeness. Though a few big titles got delayed, I still bought more games than I ever have in the past (probably about the same as Lynk) and there were a lot of winners. My overall personal GOTY is Dragon Age, you can see my list of my favorite games here. Platform of the year was definitely PC for me, a great year.

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I'm having trouble remembering the vidya from the beginning of the year, but I'll try to recap my year in vidya as best I can XD.

2009 was all about catching up on vidya of the decade for me, I started playing a lot of games that I missed earlier in the 2000's. Games like No More Heroes, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, games that are real gems, but I never found out about when they were released. Oddly enough, I was not very successful in that pursuit as I believe I have a larger backlog of games now, than I did at the outset of 2009.

Let's see what did I play this year...

Well I skipped RE5, I'm not a big fan of the series in general, never was, never will be, even if I wanted to, I have no desire to go back and play the old games to catch up on the story. So I guess the first big game of the year for me was Killzone 2, which was a solid FPS with a very entertaining multiplayer setup, but it wasn't groundbreaking in any way, I mean it looked fantastic graphically, but it didn't stand apart from all other shooters before it. Next up was probably Resistance: Retribution for the PSP, which was the start of the return of games to the PSP platform, developed by the Sony Bend studio, who are responsible for the Syphon Filter games for the PSP which developed the standard for PSP shooters.

Then the first game that really just completely stole my attention away from everything else, Pokemon Platinum for the DS came out in March and I started to re-live my childhood with 493 digital pets... that spit fire and shit. While Platinum didn't really add anything new since Diamond and Pearl, it was still a blast to play. Next came inFamous, for the PS3 which is a solid action title that I'd recommend to those of you with a PS3, it's good quality fun. Then came the quiet summer months played some Rockband Unplugged for PSP, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger for PS3, a little Battlefield 1943, Wii Sports Resort and Dissidia: Final Fantasy. All in all a solid summer, but of course the big releases don't hit until the end of the year.

The first late year big release I got was probably the Metroid Prime Trilogy... which I still haven't played (Lynk RAGE!!). Then a couple of DS games, Layton's Diabolical Box and KH 358/2 Days, haven't beat those either XD. Then came the 2 big releases that took my attention off of being a poor unemployed college grad, Demon's Souls and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, no doubt I will be replaying those games in 2010. Then came Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, another great game. The last game that really got my attention was Dragon Age: Origins, and I wasn't expecting it to at all, I thought it was gonna be boring and generic which it kind of is, but for some reason, I really ended up liking it... after turning the difficulty back to Easy XD.

Really though, when you look at the progress vidya has made over this past decade it's pretty amazing. If you take a look at the release list for the year 2000, you'll see games like Final Fantasy IX, Dues Ex, Perfect Dark, and Pokemon Gold and Silver. This year, we had games like Uncharted 2, MW2, Final Fantasy XIII, and Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. Just think about the graphical and technical leaps that those games are. It kind of makes you wonder if we're going to see the same amount of forward progress in the gaming industry in the decade to come. While I doubt that we'll see nearly as much of a graphical leap, I hope to see more progress in other facets of games....

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The technical progress is definitely amazing, but I don't know about the overall game quality. There are definitely some gems that came out this year but I don't think we have come that far in terms of story or gameplay. From a storytelling perspective, many games back then had to rely on having an engrossing story to keep people going because the graphics weren't lifelike, etc. I do think a few games have figured out where to go with this, like Uncharted 2, but overall we're not anywhere close to talking about "gaming Citizen Kane" that was so popular to discuss this year.

Then when it comes to gameplay, I just look at something like Diablo II which was released in 2000 and no game in the action RPG genre has come up with a better formula or innovated enough to make a better game. Something like Torchlight has a few new features and great art but is basically still a Diablo clone.

Not to get too down on the games industry, I think this is the best decade in gaming, I just hope the next decade sees some new formulas rather than just improving on what existing games do.

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For the most part I agree with you, storytelling and gameplay in games hasn't advanced as much as graphics sure, but could you really expect it to? Storytelling is very opinionated, for example I'm sure many people would argue that it has advanced. Specifically WRPG gamers who fapped all over the whole "choices have consequences" and "omgwtfbbq Mass Effect dialogue tree." However, there's other games, Final Fantasy is still Final Fantasy for example, it might not still be blue boxes and white words, but generally it's the same. You also mentioned Uncharted 2, which as of right now I can honestly say, had me more invested and connected to the characters than any game has ever done, and more than a majority of movies for that matter. As far as gameplay goes, that is where I would like to see this decade take off, improvements in A.I. and more player-generated action versus scripted action. Call of Duty for example as fun as it may be, is so heavily scripted that it takes me out of the action at times.

Also you need to play Demon's Souls so you can compare it to Diablo.

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I've been backtracking this year, playing older titles, often due to budget or excellence. To be honest, I can't recall the last time I bought a game at full price. >_>

The games of this year that have been played were usually smaller, indie titles - including Machinarium or Torchlight - both of which surprised me in terms of finesse and execution, with the former receiving my undivided exaltation.

In terms of evolution of gaming then and now, I'd have to say that the industry is taking a turn for the worse, for AAA developers and publishers, that is. I'll be ballsy enough to say that gameplay in terms of evolution is receding, particularly with the advent of QTEs and "cinematics". DLC is also another vector, which I suppose could concern the MMO onslaught. The most telling aspect is the fact that I seem to receive more joy with playing older, ~2000-era games than their modern-day counterparts. For example, I find Deus Ex to be deeper in gameplay and more RPG-y than Mass Effect, which isn't quite a good sign, considering that ME is made from bonafide RPG developers, whereas DX is more of a straight-up FPS. Or perhaps I'm just thick...

Which also brings me to the onslaught of digital distribution and its impact on the indie market. The indie scene is going to explode within the next few years, and big-time publishers are going to feel it, if they aren't already. Coupled with the DRM-backlash and the DLC trend, perhaps that will bring about a renaissance in the industry, where publishers enforce stricter QA to make each title inherently unique from the rest, in order to increase competition and diversity. Or, conversely, it might bring about a second video game "crash", where most of the industry liquidate themselves, and everyone has to start anew with bold, untested concepts.

Time will only tell, I suppose...

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I think in some ways, art style is taking some steps backwards as graphical power has gone up. More and more, there are games being released that are following the whole "realistic" trend. Too few are going for anything else unless it is bound by a certain artstyle because of the source material (example: an anime game).

I've also noticed that scripted events in games are on the rise with Uncharted 2 being one scripted event after the other, which is fine in itself, it's just that I worry that it may become a trend.

Also, with all the supposed improvements to AI... they're not really being improved that much, they're just teaching the AI to do more things rather than having them seem more aware... which means that the player can still outsmart them pretty easily.

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I agree Quicktime events need to get the boot, but I kind of like how Uncharted 2 does their scripted events, they are kind of similar without the horrible button press prompt having to show on the screen.

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Yeah, quick time events were pretty good back in the day. I think the best quick time event has to be the knife fight in RE4, but I never really wanted it to progress beyond the last generation.

Nowadays when I see them in todays games it's kind of annoying. Hell they're even in Assassin's Creed II but for stuff that doesn't matter. It was funny at first though, testing the buttons in the very first one that showed up lol... but aftger that it started to get annoying having to press buttons in cutscenes for stuff that didn't matter.

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Uncharted 2 attempts to 'hide' their scripted events by trying to make them a seamless transitions into cutscenes, rather unsuccessfully probably, but the character development and how invested you become in Drake and his cohorts, lets them have a free pass from me with the scripted stuff

Also I think if you can blame 1 single game for the 'advent' of the QTE it'd have to be God of War. I think RE4 was the first game out with it, but God of War really used QTE button presses for damn near everything, and hell at the time I loved it. Mostly because what QTE does is attempt to make it feel like you're still in control of your character during a cutscene, makes it feel like you're actually responsible for all that evisceration and not just watching it, and that was exciting! Now however, it just annoys me, because I'm too worried about the button presses so I don't even get to focus on the action.

Speaking of distractions... MGS4 SPOILERS...

That part where Raiden is fighting Vamp on top of the Gecko pisses me off, because you have to focus on playing as Snake to blow up all the damn Geckos, so you don't get to really watch a pretty epic fight.

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About the whole digital distribution thing... it's funny how a lot of it fails so damn hard. For example the games on demand on the 360 which prices the games (at least down here) at exactly the same price or even more than what the retail stores actually price the games. So instead of getting a copy from a store for cheap, you can buy it at full price on Xbox Live and waste some HDD space while you're at it.

Of course, it's obvious that this is to avoid any retailer backlash... kind of what's going on with the PSP Go. Down here EB Games refuses to stock the PSP Go at all and only managed to sell just over a thousand units in tis first week. Got no idea how it's selling now, but with the lack of retail support as well as consumers not being interested, it seems like it was a wasted effort to even release the system.

Of course, steam on the other hand is thriving as well as Wii Shop Channel, PSN and XBLA... so I guess it seems to me that it all depends who's doing the selling, what's being sold and how pissed off retailers will get with companies that determines the success of the digital distribution.

Obviously retailers don't care about ye olden day games that they don't sell anymore

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I wish Nintendo would follow Sony with digital games except make it one step better than the Go and have it so you can either use carts or digital downloads on the same system. I don't think boxed games will ever go away but I do hope that digital downloads keep going strong. If the PSP Go wasn't so expensive I would actually think it was worth it.

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I don't think Nintendo will ever do it as long as they're using standard SD cards as their removable memory for the DS simply because they're afraid of the whole piracy thing. They'll never do it until they can do what has been done with the 360 which disallows anything up official 360 products.

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And because they suck, Nintendo apparently knows better what we want than we do...

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What are you talking about? Nintendo DO know better than everyone else, that's why they're the leaders of online console gaming and why Microsoft failed with the Xbox and never released a successor... oh wait, that never happened. My mistake lulz

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COMING SOON! THE Nintendo DO
Dual Operating (system).
Nintendo's answer to Microsoft Windows!



er wai. that makes the acronym DOS. heh.

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what's dos?

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